At the heart of the UK economy
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John Darker visits the West Midlands and reports on attitudes towards trade union membership and the RHA and FTA
THE WEST MIDLANDS, for nearly two decades, represented the heartland of the British economy. Birmingham and Coventry and a ring of smaller towns epitomized the affluent society. As the mass of the population acquired cars, Midland industry, with a huge stake in motor vehicles, flourished.
If the prosperity balloon is now looking rather limp, not only in the Midlands, but also in many other sectors of industry in the North, North West and Scotland, it is possible to argue that labour relations problems as manifested in the "Brummagem" area had much to do with the decline.
Certainly, no student of road transport in the second half of this century could fail to ignore the impact of the West Midlands on the country's economy. Because trade unions knew that millions of workers wanted the mobility of personal transport, it was an obvious ploy for the Transport and General Workers Union, in particular, to press hard on the car industry's jugular veins.
Car transporter operations, inter-factory movements of bodies and components, were messed up by strike action or go-slows. A main justification was to ensure that lorry drivers were not less well paid than their colleagues in the motor manufacturing plants.
There was the famous Birmingham differential, giving West Midlands transport workers £2.50 per week above standard pay scales for road haulage workers. Mr Alan Law, for many years the bogeyman of British labour relations, used his forceful personality and considerable negotiating gifts vastly to improve the standard of living, and the expectations, of his lorry driver members in the Birmingham area.
Mr Law's recent retirement from the TGWU — such a ball of fire is unlikely, I think, to withdraw completely from the transport scene — marks the end of an era for road transport employers in the West Midlands.
If his successor Jim Hunt, with experience of the en gineering membership of the TGWU, makes as big an impact as Alan Law has done, he will need to exercise remarkable skills, albeit in a very different industrial relations climate than that of the Fifties and Sixties.
When I talked to Bob Ward, the RHA's West Midland secretary recently, and to Mr J. W. (Pat) Blackburn, the area chairman, it was inevitable that Alan Law's name would crop up. With the old maestro withdrawn from the stage what sort of summing up would there be?
Said Pat Blackburn: "Alan Law has often had a terrible Press; he's been called a right so-and-so many times. But anyone taking on his job had to fight. It was a terribly difficult job as he sorted out the industry. I've a lot of respect for the man."
Said Bob: "Alan Law has done more for his industry than any other man. He's the best and strongest man the TGWU ever got. There is now some rapport between Law and RHA leaders. Law never doublecrossed us and only once or twice was he unable to deliver what he'd sought to do.
A one-sided account of Alan Law's problems with his own union membership in recent years, through the eyes of employers' spokesmen, must inevitably be compressed. In essence, the RHA West Midlands spokesmen suggested that Alan Law, having squeezed as many benefits as possible from road haulage for his members, reverted to an elder statesman role, accepting tachographs as being beneficial to both sides.
Perhaps the best comment on the celebrated — or notorious! — Alan Law is from Bob Ward, describing Law's platform appearance at the Agristock conference last year: -Some of our members were 100 per cent antipathetic to Law when he came to speak but in no time at all he had his fiercest critics in stitches. He dealt with
questions with incredible speed and assurance. It was a masterly demonstration of good public relations. At the end of his talk RHA chaps were saying, 'Law's not such a bad bloke after all."
The RHA membership in the West Midlands numbers some 1721 firms in 10 sub-areas,
viz, Potteries, Shropshire, South Worcestershire and Hereford, South Warwickshire, Coventry and North. Warwickshire, South Derbyshire and Burton-on-Trent, Wolverhampton, Dudley, Birmingham, and West Bromwich, Walsall and Cannock. There are some shared membership activities with East Midlands in the Burton area.
Vehemence
About half the membership is in the centre of the area. West Midlands is not alone in having disparate members — they don't all think alike all the time! And any suggestion that "greenfields" members could opt out of central area haulage wages is put down very vehemently at the Tipton offices of the RHA.
Specialisation is an increasing factor in road haulage. The first waste disposal functional group was organised in the area. There are groups of express carriers, agricultural hauliers and an informal group, perhaps more akin to a diners club! — of international hauliers, which includes the chairman, Pat Blackburn. Meat haulage as a group has "faded away" by virtue of the Fatstock Marketing Corporation dominance. And the tipper men are now part of the National Tipping Service.
The International members, numbering about 16, who meet regularly, do not comprise the total in this field in the West Midlands.
A main concern of the West Midlands RHA leadership is to establish a Joint Industrial Council. Progress on this major piece of organisation has, I think, been slowed down by a staff shortage at area office. Labour relations work in recent years has occupied Bob Ward almost exclusively and though he is helped on the administrati.te side by Joyce Ward, his wife, the office urgently needs an executive officer to replace Jack Wass who left some time agc.
I have urged before now that every RHA area secretary needs :I a f.J II-time industrial relations ex1 ert. Bob has grown into such an expert himself, but there is a' lot of work for the membership wh ch is not geared directly to ind strial relations and which cannot be dealt with by nonspecialist staff. Clearly, any RHA secretary who is, like Bob Ward, oft n the first point of contact for the media in any 'about relations sit ation, . must have adequate ex cutive support at his right ha d.
he creation of common att tudes within the RHA is ar uous enough, apart from ne otiations with trade unions.
he RHA West Midland area is f rtunate to have secured the services of Norman Ingram, a former national chairman, to serve as industrial relations chairman in the area. Norman is said to be much respected by both sides.
Pat Blackburn said that the industrial relations committee has met a TGWU team who are, he feels, as keen as the RHA on getting a JIC to function. Everyone in the industry will wish Mr Ingram well in a very difficult role, not made any easier by the tubulence occasioned by Alan Law's differences with some of his members and branches.
In past years union negotiators in the Birmingham area have not failed to exploit grey areas between the RHA and FTA. It makes good sense that two representatives of the FTA Midlands Region attend RHA wage negotiation meetings. The RHA accept that the FTA can influence their members against -upping the ante". Leapfrogging is quite enough of a problem between RHA areas, let alone between FTA firms and RHA members in the same area.
Hence the common sense if FTA member firms will delay any pay settlement until the RHA have settled with the trade unions.
Pat Blackburn's own firm Chambers and Cook (European Services) Ltd operates with 1 6 of the firm's drivers and eight owner drivers, the latter owning units only. The owner-drivers, as I understand the position, formerly worked for Chambers and Cook Ltd which closed down after union pressure, and other factors, some years ago.
When Pat Blackburn decided to go it alone some of the redundant drivers from Chambers and Cook wanted to be part of the action. The men concerned stayed in the union and their operations are neatly integrated into the work of the present company.
Pat Blackburn has strong views about some hauliers, even RHA members, who exploit owner-drivers. And he is scathing about some of the mis leading inducements about possible earnings that lead some drivers to venture on their own.
He quoted an advertisement in an Oxford paper indicating earnings of £1,625 a week with one artic unit. A driver, said Pat, would be very lucky to earn £1200 a week and £850-£950 a week would be more typical out of which operating costs and wages and depreciaton have to be taken.
Pat Blackburn's Continental operations appear to be astonis hingly efficient, with less dead mileage than is experienced by domestic operators. He spoke of typical return trips to Germany, with back traffic in Belgium, where dead mileage is no more than 20 miles! That sounds almost too good to be true.
The RHA is concerned at some expensive trends in local government administration.
Against the background of soaring land costs, as much as £60,000 to £70,000 an acre in the Birmingham area, some operators are being required to lay down roads to depots on industrial estates to the ludicrously costly motorway standards, though the amount of traffic passing is not within a fraction of one per cent of that passing on motorways. And another case has involved a haulier in a council claim for £2000 damage to site roads adjacent to a haulage depot.
The RHA offices in the country are all being equipped with telex, and on my visit an electrician was fitting extra plug points to facilitate these better communications.
Bob Ward is greatly concerned to develop consensus policies with his sub-areas and he has visited many of them to explain the likely future set-up with a JIC. Each sub-area is represented on the Area Industrial Relations committee, so there is no excuse for members not knowing the score. As he says, the actual negotiating team should all be members because they are all good negotiators, not because they represent a particular area.
Representative nogotiations in which all parties concerned can have trust is a nitty gritty aspect of I/R. The West Midlands I /R committee of 16 compares with the general committee of 33 and according to Pat Blackburn there is a militant RHA member in every sub-area! The union side once fielded a team of 19, of whom only one spoke, against eight RHA negotiators. Clearly there is no easy solution to pleasing everybody in pay haggles.
Hard bunch
In general Bob Ward thinks that the West Midlands are more realistic than the rest of the country. "We've been found right. Now the director-general says what I said two years ago. RHA policy has come round to our line, though I say this with no sense of arrogance. A hard bunch of business men run this area. But we'll follow Parliamentary guidelines on pay matters whether we like them or not."
The FTA regional office in West Bromwich is well situated for the motorway network but the offices are distintly cramped owing to the growth of staff and the extent of documentation which is stored and distributed to the membership.
Martin Richards, the Regional Controller, presides over a total staff of 36. He did not know the population covered but we agreed it was of several millions. Following the merger of East and West Midlands divisions in 1974 it covers Midand South Cheshire and Mid-Wales, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire including South Humberside kGrimsby), parts of the Wash area — but not King's Lynn, covered by the South Eastern division — Peterborough, Northants, Leicestershire, Warwickshire, Worcester/Hereford, Powis, Builth Wells, Llandrindod Wells, Portmadoc and thence to Cheshire.
To make such a large area manageable there are six Divisions, viz East Midlands (Couiities of Leicester and Northants), Lincoln Division (County of Lincolnshire plus South Humberside), Notts/Derby (Chesterfield attached to Northern Region), West Mercia (Here
ford /Worcester, Shropshire and Mid Wales), North West Midlands (Staffordshire, South Cheshire, Wolverhampton/ Walsall and part of West Midland Metropolitan County) and Central Midlands (Greater Birmingham and County and Warwickshire).
The ETA's regional structure calls for 24 divisions in the five regions. In shaping the divisional boundaries county boundaries, traffic area boundaries and centres of population were all considered. If the whole of the West Midlands County had been put in one division it would have been too big; hence Wolverhampton and Walsall went to North West Midlands. These places, it was felt, had more affinity to Staffordshire than to Birmingham. The North Lincs members wanted to be with the rest of Lincolnshire in their own division.
Two divisions embrace one local authority. The Northern office based at Leeds deals with North Humberside north of the river while the Midlands region deals with questions affecting the south of the river.
Owen Thomas, the regional secretary, has three assistant secretaries each dealing with two divisions. Jim Long looks after East Midlands and Lincoln; Colin Hagan deals with Notts/ Derby and North West Midlands; and Joe Heeson services Central Midlands and West Mercia. The engineering function is run by Don White, with three assistant regional engineers supervising in total 18 field engineers. The Admin Officer, Janice Cox reports to Owen Thomas. The admin role is quite complex covering bookkeeping and accounts, membership records and statistics, stock purchases and training.
With a total membership of 3300, which increases steadily, Martin Richards says the right policy is to visit operators and potential new members and sell FTA services. Each assistant secretary reckons to spend two days a week on development work. The FTA regional controllers work to a well thought-out budgetary formula in which the name of the game is revenue.
Unlikely areas such as Mid Wales have been fished successfully with a trebled membership of West Mercia division. Meeting venues are carefully selected to gain the maximum propaganda impact. Each of the six divisions has six meetings a year, often in different towns.
No difficulty is found in getting a good line-up of interesting speakers from the industry, police, Health and Safety Inspectorate, ACAS, or whatever. Members show much interest in labour relations and ACAS speakers have welcomed the chance to talk to representative transport audiences.
The FTA appreciate the opportunity of representation on two RHA negotiating committees. Martin Richards sees this form of collaboration continuing whatever happens in future. He believes that the example of cooperation between the two associations in the Midlands has encouraged other areas to proceed on similar lines. "Our members know what the hauliers are doing and we can say what our members are doing. It is an informal relationship but the flow of information amongst vehicle operators is a real thing now."
While each region of the FTA aims to be as self-sufficient as possible, the staff accept that they must be jacks of all trades. Hence, that it makes sense to use the expertise of HQ staff at Tonbridge Wells on I /R, legal, international or costing matters. David Green, at HQ, has been co-ordinating fuel supply problems in conjunction with regional information.
In the January lorrymen's strike, Martin Richards — with Bob Ward of the RHA — served on the West Midland transport emergency sub-committee chaired by the Regional Controller of the Department of Transport. Meetings were held almost daily, and Martin also fitted in rather less frequent meetings chaired by the East Midlands licensing Authority, Mr Sheridan.
To get the members' eye view I was able to meet two FTA veterans, "on the job".
Francis Charlton, director of purchasing and distribution for the Tyres Division and group movement controller, Dunlop Rubber Company, is a former divisional chairman of the FTA and a former chairman — the first — of the Midlands Road Development Group. He is a member of the FTA Executive Board and he has had over ten years' experience of FTA activities.
Having known Francis for a number of years and holding the view that his is one of the most acute minds in distribution, I put to him a suggestion from an FTA member in the Northern region that the calibre of young transport and distribution executives today was not wholly satisfactory.
Said Francis Charlton: -The older generation were closer to their operation and its costing side and more intuitive as to whether they were making money. The newer generation are better about legislation and more understanding about labour relations, but they have not sufficient 'feel' to be entrepreneurs.'.
For some years now Mr Charlton has studied closely the inter-action of hired and company fleet operations at Dunlop. He is a great exponent of "trading off" and playing tunes on variable factors, vehicle capacities, rates, incentives, quick turn-round etc, and it is something of a triumph that despite the traumas of the January labour relations situation, he more than contained operating costs at Dunlop.
Francis said that one good thing to come out of the crisis in January was that boards of directors were compelled to take a closer interest in the distribution function. The big question is how to ensure that this interest does not rapidly dissipate.
Wilf Bartleet, transport manager of TI Desford Tubes Ltd, near Leicester, is another member of the FTA Executive Board. Over 30 years in road transport, learning about distribution as a BRS cadet at Rugeley depot and with the Scribona company, Wilf stressed the great changes he has seen from TRTA days to the present FTA organisation.
"In the Black Country, before I came to Desford, it was hard to get on the Divisional Committee; it was rather a closed shop representing big companies and big personalities.
-The FTA structure in the old East Midland division was very weak. A lot of the leading members were involved with selling tyres, batteries, etc to our members. They were not interested in transport as such. Attendances were poor, as small as 12 members on an area committee at Leicester.
-But with reorganisation of the FTA the Divisional Committee became much stronger. The bigger area provided more talent. You need 20 or 25 good members in a big area.
"The FTA is very sound for the information it gives members. I can say I've never had bad advice from the Association. Membership gives you a real pay-off in your work as a transport manager. I get to know things through membership which are of real benefit to my company."
A pressing problem showing no sign of a solution applies to all organisations: how to interest more members in the work of the body? There is not room for too many officers on the bridge, yet it is necessary to deploy the skills and experience of the veteran activists.
As Wilf Bartleet says, of 400-odd members in the East Midlands Division a maximum of 35 can serve on committees. "The rest read the FTA journal and make the occasional inquiry by phone to regional office."
I'm sure there is a similar minority of work-horses in the RHA. Perhaps they're a special breed. Without them the dedicated work of the paid officers of transport associations would be much less effective.